ACTION PERCEPTION AND THE SENSORIMOTOR SYSTEM IN INFANT VERB LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

The proposed project seeks to examine the role that the sensorimotor system, action perception, and action experiences play in infant verb learning. This research will begin to identify how these domains interact when language skills are at a crucial stage of development and are buttressed by the ability to understand the actions of others. The aim is to address a series of questions that can directly assess what role the sensorimotor system plays in early verb processing, whether active experiences with actions influence infants' later verb comprehension, and whether individual differences in infants' motor capacities can predict later verb learning.